“Continuous effort -not strength or intelligence- is the key to unlocking our potential.” (Winston Churchill). The question of what factors truly lead to the success of an individual has been one that has been tackled for generations and generations of humanity. It is a question that has thoroughly grabbed the attention of people from every single demographic, from renowned authors such as Malcolm Orwell in his novel Outliers, all the way down to the average person, such as myself. After reading the opinions and studies of many other people, and observing the qualities of those I believe to be successful, I believe that the effort is the single most important factor that contributes towards one’s success is the amount of effort that one puts into their daily life.

Out of the millions of different things that one could do in order to be deemed “successful” in life, effort is one quality that can be applied to every single one of them in order to improve and build upon that individual subject. I believe that regardless of whether one deems success to be one of finance, one of relationship building, or one of legacy forging, the application of effort is something that can be applied to any one of those things in order to improve them and increase the likelihood of “success” in any single one of those fields. In terms of finance, the amount of time the economist dedicates to researching individual stocks directly proportional to the amount of money he makes in the long run. The amount of time and commitment one puts into a relationship highly contributes to the rate of success within that relationship. From Malcolm Orwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” to Kruger’s “effort heuristic,” the application of effort in regards to success is one that has been generously studied and always seems to directly correlate.

Effort is something that is almost impossible to measure with any sort of quantitative value, but yet, it is still something that is omnipresent in the tasks and accomplishments of individuals. Where would Yuna Kim, figure skating gold medalist, be without the thousands and thousands of hours spent practicing on her own and through her childhood? Where would Bill Gates, CEO and founder of Microsoft, be without the unfathomable amount of hours behind a computer screen learning the various intricacies of computer software? The amount of hours spent doing little things such as self practice and contemplation of daily tasks is something that can not be accurately measured, but nevertheless, is still there whenever you look towards those who are deemed “successful” by society.

From the mothers and fathers of this planet, whose countless hours of dedication and many sleepless nights, to the richest and most famous people in the world, one binding characteristic is shared between all of them: effort. Without effort, wonderful technologies such as the computer or the cell phone would have gone uninvented, instead laying dormant within the mind of an inventor “too busy” to actually put his ideas to work. Without effort, the cries of babies would go unanswered, leading to emotional problems dramatically increasing within the population. Without strong and continuous effort, the world itself would be changed drastically from what it is today. And it is only through this effort, that one’s potential truly shines.